Great piece from the Scrapook Section of the Weekly Standard, hands down my favorite mag edited by those two studs Bill and Fred (Krystol and Barnes). They spew their java across the keyboard when reading Joan Didion's visceral attack on the left's untenable and singleminded assault on those of us who believed Terri's life was worth living. READ IT ALL

The Scrapbook almost spilled its morning coffee upon opening the June 9
issue of the New York Review of Books and finding that Joan Didion had
written . . . well, a remarkably forthright and evenhanded account of the Terri
Schiavo case. In fact, Didion's essay is easily the best treatment of the case
since Eric Cohen's essays in these pages (see "How Liberalism Failed Terri
Schiavo," April 4, 2005, and "What Living Wills Won't Do," April 18, 2005).
Everyone should read it. We're not joking.

Now, we always expect that Didion's prose will be sharp. What we weren't
expecting was that she would aim her blade at liberals, especially the type who
labeled as "fundamentalists" all those who felt that Michael Schiavo shouldn't
be allowed to kill his wife. Here's Didion:

That this was a situation offering space for legitimate
philosophical differences seemed obvious. Yet there remained, on the "rational"
side of the argument, very little acknowledgment that there could be large
numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as "fundamentalists" or
"evangelicals," who

were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of
viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it. There remained little
acknowledgment even that the case was being badly handled, rendered
unnecessarily inflammatory. There was an insensitivity in the timing of the
removal of the feeding tube, which took place on the Friday before Palm Sunday,
meaning that the gradual process of dying coincided with a week that for
Christians has specifically to do with sacrificial suffering and death. "Oh come
on," someone said when this was mentioned on a cable show. There was a further
insensitivity in the fact that the tube was removed at all. If the sole
intention is to terminate feeding and hydration, there is no need to remove a
gastric feeding tube. All anyone need do is stop plunging the formula into the
tube. . . . In this case, in the absence of some unusual circumstance that
remained unreported, the sole purpose of actual removal would seem to have been
to make any legally ordered resumption of feeding difficult to
implement.

And here's Didion on the badly reported facts of the case:

Theresa Schiavo was repeatedly described as "brain dead." This
was inaccurate: Those whose brains are dead are unable even to breathe, and can
be kept alive only on ventilators. She was repeatedly described as "terminal."
This too was inaccurate. She was "terminal" only in the sense that her husband
had obtained a court order authorizing the removal of her feeding tube; her
actual physical health was such that she managed to stay alive in a hospice, in
which only palliative treatment is given and patients without antibiotics often
die of the pneumonia that accompanies immobility or the bacteremia that
accompanies urinary catheterization, for five years.

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Liberal Dominos Falling on Schiavo

Great piece from the Scrapook Section of the Weekly Standard, hands down my favorite mag edited by those two studs Bill and Fred (Krystol and Barnes). They spew their java across the keyboard when reading Joan Didion's visceral attack on the left's untenable and singleminded assault on those of us who believed Terri's life was worth living. READ IT ALL

The Scrapbook almost spilled its morning coffee upon opening the June 9
issue of the New York Review of Books and finding that Joan Didion had
written . . . well, a remarkably forthright and evenhanded account of the Terri
Schiavo case. In fact, Didion's essay is easily the best treatment of the case
since Eric Cohen's essays in these pages (see "How Liberalism Failed Terri
Schiavo," April 4, 2005, and "What Living Wills Won't Do," April 18, 2005).
Everyone should read it. We're not joking.

Now, we always expect that Didion's prose will be sharp. What we weren't
expecting was that she would aim her blade at liberals, especially the type who
labeled as "fundamentalists" all those who felt that Michael Schiavo shouldn't
be allowed to kill his wife. Here's Didion:

That this was a situation offering space for legitimate
philosophical differences seemed obvious. Yet there remained, on the "rational"
side of the argument, very little acknowledgment that there could be large
numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as "fundamentalists" or
"evangelicals," who

were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of
viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it. There remained little
acknowledgment even that the case was being badly handled, rendered
unnecessarily inflammatory. There was an insensitivity in the timing of the
removal of the feeding tube, which took place on the Friday before Palm Sunday,
meaning that the gradual process of dying coincided with a week that for
Christians has specifically to do with sacrificial suffering and death. "Oh come
on," someone said when this was mentioned on a cable show. There was a further
insensitivity in the fact that the tube was removed at all. If the sole
intention is to terminate feeding and hydration, there is no need to remove a
gastric feeding tube. All anyone need do is stop plunging the formula into the
tube. . . . In this case, in the absence of some unusual circumstance that
remained unreported, the sole purpose of actual removal would seem to have been
to make any legally ordered resumption of feeding difficult to
implement.

And here's Didion on the badly reported facts of the case:

Theresa Schiavo was repeatedly described as "brain dead." This
was inaccurate: Those whose brains are dead are unable even to breathe, and can
be kept alive only on ventilators. She was repeatedly described as "terminal."
This too was inaccurate. She was "terminal" only in the sense that her husband
had obtained a court order authorizing the removal of her feeding tube; her
actual physical health was such that she managed to stay alive in a hospice, in
which only palliative treatment is given and patients without antibiotics often
die of the pneumonia that accompanies immobility or the bacteremia that
accompanies urinary catheterization, for five years.